Stoic
by Supernoodle
Summary: Some would say that Lieutenant Commander Steven McGarett was stoic. That's because those people didn't know him like Danny did. Hurt!Steve with a side of Danno to the rescue. My first Five-0 fic. Enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

**_Okay, so I like to jump on bandwagons – what can I say... Everyone else is whumping Steve McGarrett so why shouldn't I? Thing is with Steve, not only is he hotter than hell, he's a SEAL - you gotta hit the guy pretty damn hard to hurt him…_**

**_Shameful, plotless whump ahoy!_**

_**Hope you enjoy my first attempt at Five-0 fiction,**_

_**Supernoodle - 10th Aug 2011**_

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><p><strong><span>Stoic<span>**

**-o- **

Some would say that Lieutenant Commander Steven McGarett was stoic. That's because those people didn't know him like Danny did.

Steve was many things, but stoic? No, not really – What he was was badass, and there was a big difference. Steve didn't just put on a brave face; the guy literally barely seemed to register pain. Whether it was his super-SEAL training at Annapolis, or like Chin had suggested, he was born without the pain gene as well as the fear, Danny didn't know. What he did know was that he'd seen Steve shot in the shoulder and still cracking jokes, had seen him beaten all to hell and still Steve was ready to fight. A tazer to the throat barely put him down for ten minutes, a badly broken arm and concussion was shrugged off in an afternoon.

Danny's bum knee had taken months to heal and yes, he'd moaned about it. A lot.

When they'd first started working together, Danny had done some homework on his new partner. He'd needed to know just who the crazy guy who was going to get him killed was. Danny now knew all about Navy SEALs and the training they put themselves through. He knew about the lunacy that was Hell Week and the drownproofing and the fact that only about ten percent of candidates made it through the program. That made Steve McGarrett the crème de la crème of badasses. But the more Danny got to know Steve, the more he realised why he approached his work in Five-0 the way he did.

To Lieutenant Commander McGarett there were no criminals to be arrested, there were only enemies to be defeated. And his lack of appreciation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments came from the fact that they just didn't apply in combat situations. When there were people shooting at you with RPGs, you didn't read them their rights, you took them down as hard and as fast as you could.

Danny would never tell McGarrett this, but having a Navy SEAL in your corner was kind of cool. That is, when he wasn't being shot at because of him.

So no, Lieutenant Commander Steven McGarett wasn't stoic – he was a lean, mean, ass-kicking machine, and that's why the pitiful noises coming from the barn next door were making Danny's blood run cold.

He'd been waiting for what seemed like hours for Li Zhang and his men to leave the old barn. Kono and Chin were in position just outside and half a dozen HPD were on the outskirts of the deserted farm, just waiting for their orders. It seemed like Li had wanted Steve from the get go after Five-0 had busted his trafficking operation the month before, and after running his truck off the road up at the top of the dirt track out by Oahuna's old place, Steve is what Li had. Chin had found the truck all banged up on its side two days ago, tyres shot out, windscreen smashed on the driver's side. There hadn't been any blood on the upholstery, but that didn't mean that Steve wasn't hurt. And as much as it was killing him, Danny knew there's was no way he could just go in, all guns a blazing and get his partner back – he wasn't a SEAL, he was a regular Joe from New Jersey - he couldn't pull off the crazy stunts that his partner seemed to pull on purpose just to scare the crap out of him. He had no idea how many bad guys were in there, where Steve was and what Li had done to him. God, what had he done to him? Danny had made a fist so tight that blood had welled up in his palm when he'd first heard his partner's hoarse screams of pain, and now the screaming had stopped, replaced with breathless, agonised sobbing, which was somehow far worse.

People didn't make sounds like that unless they were being tortured.

Just when he thought he couldn't take any more, that he was going to do something rash and stupidly dangerous, as much like McGarrett as he was ever going to be, there was movement and Li walked past Danny's hiding place, bodyguards in tow. Danny counted to twenty, not being able to wait any longer, and brandishing his firearm, he slipped into the middle of the barn where Steve was being held – hoping to God that the trap they had set for Li would pan out. All he could do was trust his team now, and trust in the HPD; he'd done all he could. The only thing he really cared about now was getting to his partner before it was too late.

The case had been a bad one from the start – Li Zhang had once been a high ranking official in the Chinese Communist party, now he was a people trafficker. He charged desperate, persecuted people thousands of dollars for the promise of a new life in America – eschewing communism for capitalism in the worst possible way. When his victims finally arrived in the United States, Li took their money and forced them into virtual slavery. A container holding nearly fifty close to death Chinese nationals had been found at the docks, Men, Women and Children who were quickly freed, hospitalised and placed under State protection pending Li's arrest, and Danny had quickly learned a whole bunch of god-awful, gut churning things that he could have happily gone his whole life without knowing. China, it seemed, was not always so hot on the whole concept of human rights and torture seemed to be an everyday occurrence.

Danny had seen some bad things in his time. It came with the territory he guessed, being a cop you had good cases where everything turned out peachy in the end, and then you had bad cases. The trick was to not let things settle. When he began to think that the world was really a stinking cess pit of depravity, and there were days lately when this is all he could think – despite the endless Hawaiian sunshine - all he had to do was watch his little girl having a tea-party with her stuffed animals on the lawn and it all became worth it again. Gracie usually made everything okay, but he had a feeling it was going to take more than a hug from his daughter to make this day better.

Five-O had arrested Li on two previous occasions but to their frustration, both times he'd walked on a technicality. The last time on his way out of the station, Li had threatened the SEAL with a slow, painful death if he ever came near him again to which Steve had replied by laughing in his face. Danny was just praying that he hadn't come through on his promise.

"_McGarrett?"_ Danny whispered, edging his way into the barn. He knew that Li was far from stupid and had probably left guards to make sure that Steve stayed captured. And if he had, then too bad for them, because Danny wasn't taking prisoners today. "Steve?"

He could still hear his partner making that pitiful sound and it was freaking him the hell out. If the idiot had only waited for him instead of going off all Rambo as usual. If only he'd taken a moment to realise that when someone threatened to kill you, Super-SEAL or not, it _was_ actually possible for them to succeed.

McGarrett didn't seem to be frightened of anything or anyone and Danny had realised some time ago that this was not one of his partner's many assets. This was the thing that was going to get him killed.

_"Steven?"_ Danny hissed as he edged his way along the crates that were stacked around the room. He was getting closer, he could smell cigarette smoke and sour sweat and the unmistakable butcher-shop smell of blood, and there was a tiny beep-beep-beep of someone texting on a cheap, disposable cell phone. Holding out his gun, Danny checked the safety one last time and taking a deep breath, he stepped round the edge of the crate.

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><p><strong><em>Would say I'm sorry to leave it on a cliffy, but building up tension -that's what writing's about. And remember, feedback makes the Supernoodle type faster...<em>**


	2. Chapter 2

_**Thanks so much for the awesome reviews everyone - glad you're enjoying this slice of plotless whump. And it is plotless... Don't expect a work of great cleverness or skill, I just felt beating the crap out of a hot Navy SEAL (or maybe I'm wishing this upon my stupid boyfriend who is walking on very thin ice at the mo - or maybe I'm just warped lol) **_

_**Anyhoo - I hope this was worth the wait. Enjoy!**_

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><p>Somehow they hadn't heard him coming. Danny had one of Li's men down before the texter had even drawn his weapon, and when the other mook went for his gun, Danny dropped him as well. He always tried to wound instead of kill if it was at all possible, but Danny barely even glanced down at the bloody bodies of Li's men as he ran past them towards his partner, not really caring if they were dead or alive as long as they stayed down.<p>

McGarrett was stripped to the waist and kneeling in the bloody dirt on the old barn's floor. Danny vaguely registered the dark bruising and abrasions that covered his partner's bare torso but they were really the least of Steve's worries. Just like in those sickening pictures of the torture inflicted on Falun Gong followers back in China that Danny had forced himself to look through as evidence in Li's case, one of Steve's arms was wrapped across his throat and back over his shoulder while the other had been twisted violently up behind his back. His wrists were tied together impossibly tightly with thin green nylon rope, which in turn was tethering him to one of the barn's wooden supports – tying him just right so that if he slumped forward any more, or lost consciousness, the rope would literally tear off a hand.

Steve's right shoulder was clearly dislocated and his back was covered in blood that seemed to have come from his wrists where the nylon rope had cut deep into soft flesh. His hands were almost purple, several fingers clearly busted and Danny couldn't tell for sure because of all the blood, but it looked like a couple of fingernails were missing. But it was the look of sheer agony on Steve's face that almost made Danny lose it. Tears had cut a line through the dirt and blood that caked his partner's ashen face and every struggling breath ended with a gasping sob of pain that twisted Danny's gut like the world's least amusing balloon animal.

"Steve?... _Steven?"_ Danny cried, kneeling down next to his partner and McGarrett looked up at Danny, silently, desperately, begging him to make the pain stop. "I found you, Steven. I got you. You're gonna be okay." And pulling the knife from his belt, Danny cut the rope that was tethering Steve to the support.

A harsh cry of pain escaped Steve's throat as he slumped bonelessly forwards, but Danny was there to catch him, and carefully, he reached around and cut through the rope that was tying Steve's wrists together – all the time unconsciously murmuring gentle words of comfort as the big SEAL choked back his screams.

"Shhhh... You're okay now. I gotcha… Danno's gotcha…" Danny told him, gently easing his arms back to his side – back to where they were meant to be, feeling his partner's whole body trembling. His left shoulder was black with bruising all the way down past the huge tattoo on his bicep, and the way his arm was hanging weirdly out of line with his shoulder made Danny feel kind of sick.

"Danny." Steve gasped as his face turned from pale to bone white underneath all the blood. There was a gash from his temple to the middle of his right eyebrow that seemed to be the source of most of it and Danny wondered if that had come from the car wreck. He guessed he could add concussion to the list of Steve's probable injuries along with dislocation, fractures, blood loss, dehydration, shock... And that's only what he could see on the surface.

"Yeah, Danno's here." Danny replied. He knew he should call for back up right now, but he couldn't let Steve go without the risk of hurting him even more. More worrying was the blood that had begun to pour from Steve's shredded wrists now they were free, and Danny firmly wrapped his hand around each one in an effort to stop Steve bleeding out all over the barn floor, trying his best to detach himself from the sensation of hot blood pouring out against his hands as Steve hissed with pain and tried to buck out of his grip.

Danny was far from squeamish, but this wasn't some random vic all cut up in a gang fight, this was Steve – this was his partner, _his friend _and man, it was a lot of blood…

"_Sonovabitch,"_ Steve gasped weakly. "Owww Danno... Let _g-go_."

"No, no... Steven. You're bleeding, man. Bleeding a lot. You gotta calm down."

Steve made a few more weak attempts at freeing himself, eyes glassy with pain and growing disorientation before his strength seemed to finally run out, and he sagged weakly against Danny's shoulder. It had been two days. Two days of hunger, thirst and unimaginable pain and Danny's fury threatened to boil over at the thought of what his partner must have gone through.

Steve McGarrett was badass but he was only a man and a man could only take so much.

"Chin!" Danny yelled, hoping that the rest of his team were where they should be as he eased Steve as carefully as he could down to the floor. _"_Chin!..._ Kono!"_

Steve had held on this long, he'd be damned if he was going to lose him now. He'd never say it out loud, never give Steve the satisfaction of knowing he'd won him over, but the guy was his best friend and Danny Williams didn't let his friends bleed to death on the floors of filthy Hawaiian barns.

"Gonna get a chopper out here right away, Steven. You just gotta hang on til it's here and everything will be okay."

"Don't n-need a chopper… I c-can walk…" Steve replied and Danny couldn't help but smile. Steve had told him a story once about one of his SEAL buddies who had crashed his dirt bike out on a remote dirt road in Afghanistan. The guy had apparently ripped most of the sole of his foot off in the crash, _"it was flapping like the sole of a busted shoe"_ Steve had enthusiastically told him over his meatball sub one lunchtime. Apparently, instead of waiting for help to arrive, the guy had calmly pulled the stones out of what was left of his foot, tied it together with strips of his shirt and had driven himself back to base. Danny had been doubtful at the time, as well as pissed at Steve for ruining his enjoyment of a perfectly delicious sandwich, but now he _really_ knew Steve, he wasn't so sure that the story was just more macho SEAL bullshit.

"You're not walking anywhere, Steven. You're just gonna lay quietly here and wait for some nice guys to come help you. Got that?"

Steve nodded. He was shaking badly, breath coming in short little gasps and Danny winced in sympathy at the thought of how much his partner must be hurting. He'd popped out his shoulder twice – once playing football in High school and another time tackling a mugger to the ground back in Jersey, and both times it had hurt like Hell. Even with the good drugs. He didn't want to think about what other injuries might have been inflicted on his partner – what he could see was bad enough.

"I didn't tell Li w-where t-they were..." Steve stammered, his voice barely more than a hoarse whisper. "Didn't t-tell him..."

"That's good, Man. You did good. But now we gotta worry about you now, okay. You're in a bit of a mess, my friend."

"I tried... I-I couldn't... There were t-too many..."

"Sshhh now, Steven." Danny soothed, trying to ignore the yelling that had started just outside the barn and the gunshots that made Steve flinch beneath him.

"G-Go, help them…" Steve murmured and Danny smiled and shook his head. "Chin and Kono have it all under control, Steven. Everyone is where they need to be. Don't you worry your pretty little head about it, okay."

"M'not pretty… M'r-ruggedly handsome." Steve whispered and Danny smiled despite the pit inside his stomach. "Not so handsome at the moment, Babe."

"Y-You… You l-looked in the mirror lately?…" Steve replied, eyes closing with exhaustion and as he lost his battle to stay conscious, Chin and Kono appeared in the barn's doorway, followed by a whole platoon of HPD.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Okay, so thanks for being awesome with all the reviews again - and thanks for being massively patient. I'm sooo slow, I know, and this is only a short chapter, but I'm halfway through the next two chapters, if that makes up for it at all?...**_

_**PS. Chapter 2 has been added to slightly, so you may want to have a quick read of that again before you start this chapter.**_

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><p>"Danny? You in there?"<p>

Danny peered at the haggard face in the mirror above the sink and for a moment, he would have sworn it was his old Man looking back at him. He seemed to have aged twenty years since McGarrett had disappeared, and pumping another handful of soap out of the dispenser; he turned the hot tap back on and began to scrub again at his hands. Blood stained, especially the blood of a partner. Sometimes it never came off.

"Danny?" Chin's voice called again from outside the bathroom door and the detective sighed. He'd gone with Steve in the chopper leaving Chin and Kono to tie things up on the ground. Not that it made much difference. Steve had been rushed off to a trauma room as soon as the chopper touched down and no matter how much he had insisted, the nurses wouldn't let him follow.

"_As soon as we know how's he's doing, the doctor will come and see you, Detective,"_ they had told him, and while Danny was usually a pretty patient guy – compared to Steve, anyway - the waiting was driving him nuts. Waiting was all he'd done for the past two days – waiting for Steve to be found, waiting for Li to leave the barn and now waiting for the doctors to come and tell him that Steve was going to be okay.

He had to be okay.

McGarrett had been talking to him in the barn. Talking and cracking his terrible jokes, despite what he'd gone through, but it seemed like as soon as he knew help had arrived, that he was safe, all his fight had left him. Danny had watched numbly as the doctor in the chopper had struggled to keep Steve stable, to keep his blood pressure up, to keep him breathing…

"Williams, open the door!" Chin's voice yelled again, snapping Danny out of his thoughts and he turned off the tap, unlocking the bathroom door before the older man broke it down.

Chin burst into the room, taking in Danny's blood-stained shirt and trousers, and the bright red skin of his hands in a single glance. "You alright, Brah?"

"Yeah Chin. I'm fine… I'm good," Danny replied, not sure if it was true or not. What he was was freaked out and feeling the effects of a massive adrenaline dump. His hands were shaking, guts feeling like the spin cycle of a washing machine, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to puke, pass out or cry – whatever, it didn't matter - he wasn't going to do any of those things. Not until he knew Steve was going to be okay and he was in the privacy of his own home. "Just tell me that bastard Li is in custody right now."

"Li is in HPD cells as we speak." Chin replied, frowning and he reached down and took hold of the detective's wrist, holding his near scalded hand up to the light. "How hot was that water, Danny?"

Danny shrugged, pulling his hand away and tucking them out of sight into his pockets. "There was so much blood, Chin. I-I had to get it off my hands... "

The older man sighed, face softening with understanding. He was worried about Steve too, he'd seen some terrible things in his time on the force, seen bad things happen to good people and it never got any easier.

"He'll be okay, you know."

"They were freakin' torturing him, man. You didn't see him all strung up... We should have found him sooner, he shouldn't have had to go through that..."

Chin sighed. "I know, Brah. I know this is hard, but you got him out. You found him and got him out and he's a SEAL for Christ's sake – he probably had worse at Annapolis."

Danny nodded, wanting nothing more than to believe the words that were coming out of Chin's mouth, but he couldn't quite bring himself to. Torture was torture, whether you were a SEAL or not and he could still hear Steve's agonised screams ringing in his ears.

"You better keep me away from the custody cells when we get back to HPD, Chin. If you don't, I'm gonna shoot that asshole Li in the face."

"If it would make you feel any better, Danny. I would let you." Chin replied quietly, and taking Danny by the arm, he lead him back into the relative's room where Kono was busy pacing a groove in the lino.

"Did the doctor come and find you?" She asked, stopping in her tracks as soon as they walked in.

"No, why? _When?_ What did he say?"

"They wouldn't say anything to me. They wanted to speak to you, Danny. They said you're down as Steve's emergency contact."

"Me?" Danny almost laughed. "Steve McGarrett's emergency contact?... _Seriously?"_

"Looks like it." Kono replied, shrugging. "Not like he really has anyone else, is it?"

Danny swallowed dryly. He'd never really thought about it like that, but Kono was right. Their little team was really the closest thing Steve had to a family. The guy had pretty much lost everyone who he'd ever been close to and he'd even had to send his sister away to keep her safe. He sometimes forgot just how much crap Steve had been through, how much he'd had to deal with – how much he was still trying to deal with. It was a wonder sometimes that the guy was still able to function more or less like a human-being.

"Which way did the doc go, Kono?"

Kono pointed in the direction of the trauma rooms and Danny reached over and gave her arm a quick, reassuring squeeze. "You guys still gonna wait here?"

"Of course," the cousins replied in unison.

"Good." Danny replied. "I'll come find you when I know how he's doing." And he jogged off in search of the doctor.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Okay, we had the hurt, now mehaps you would like a little comfort, no?...**_

_**Oh, and I meant to point out in the last chapter that the little story that Danny remembers about the SEAL with the flappy foot is actually a true story. I was doing some research and found this on a Naval blog. Just thought I'd share that with you :-)**_

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><p>Steve woke to glorious Hawaiian sunshine and the worst headache he'd ever had in his life. But it wasn't until he tried to elbow himself upright that he realised why he was vertical in the first place.<p>

"Whoa, whoa... What are you doing? Stay down, dumbass," came a familiar voice and Steve blinked up to see Danny peering down at him. He closed his eyes for a moment, waiting for the wave of pain to subside, then he risked another look round, squinting in the too bright light. Danny was perched on the end of what looked very much like a hospital bed, and although his partner was smiling, it didn't quite reach his eyes. It took a few more moments for Steve to realise that his left arm was immobilised against his chest and following the I.V tubes from the crooks of his elbows, he saw a bag of O-Neg as well as a half empty bag of saline suspended above him.

That, his stinking headache, and the state of Danny's shirt meant he'd lost a lot of blood at some point and he swallowed painfully, throat feeling like he'd been screaming himself hoarse for about a week.

"You want some water, Man?" Danny asked, hopping down off the bed and pouring a glass of water from the jug on the table beside his bed. Bringing it back over, he frowned and picked up the bed control. "Gotta sit you up a little or you'll choke, and I don't think I can take any more dramatics right now."

"Thanks," Steve rasped and went to reach for the glass, already forgetting, thanks to a nervous system full of medicinal opiates, what a bad idea trying to move was. Pain ripped through his arm, up through his shoulder and deep into his chest, and even though he was clearly on the good drugs from the way everything was a little bit fuzzy around the edges, he couldn't help the strangled gasp that escaped his lips.

"Did I not just tell you to stay down? Did I not just say those words to you, Steven?" Danny scolded, anxiously looking from his partner's face to the blip on the heart monitor by the bed that had just tripled in speed.

"Don't shout at me Danny, my goddamn head hurts." Steve snapped in reply, immediately regretting his tone as Danny's face darkened. He only had the vaguest of memories of what had gone down, he remembered driving out after Li then being in some filthy, stinking old barn, and pain – he remembered a hell of a lot of pain, but the actual details were pretty sketchy. By the look on Danny's face, it couldn't have been good. His partner looked like a man who'd had a pretty terrible couple of days and he was clear headed enough to realise that he was probably the cause of most of it. "I'm sorry, Danno," he sighed, and when Danny looked up, he nodded towards the blood on his shirt. "That all mine?"

Danny nodded. "Yeah, you're the only one who was bleeding."

"Good."

"No, not good, Steven. _Not_ good." Danny replied. "You lost nearly a quarter of your blood volume – that's a lot of goddamn blood to lose. Not to mention everything else." And he gestured wildly in Steve's general direction. "They might need to operate on your popped shoulder, but they're gonna wait til some of the swelling goes down to see how bad it is."

Steve lifted his free hand a few inches of the bed so he could see the damage, frowning at the thick dressing on his wrist and he wiggled his strapped up fingers experimentally, wincing at the pull of the stitches in his wrist.

"Two busted fingers on that hand, three on the other… Your fingernails might grow back sometime before Christmas."

Oh, that's good," Steve murmured. "Anything else?"

"Yeah, your wrists were sliced up pretty bad from the nylon rope Li had you strung up with – it was like the end of _Carrie_, man. Blood everywhere. You have about a million stitches..."

Steve nodded, trying to take it all in. Memories were starting to push their way into his thoughts now the fuzziness of his heavily medicated sleep was wearing off, but he wasn't sure he wanted to let them in and he swallowed dryly. "Can I have some of that water now, Danny?"

Danny smiled, and handing Steve the bed controls and waiting until he was mostly upright, he popped a straw in the glass of water and held it to Steve's dry lips. "You good?"

Steve took a sip of the water and nodded. He hadn't realised how thirsty he was and tried to remember the last time he'd had a drink. "How long?" He mumbled around the straw. He couldn't have guessed what day it was for all the pineapples on Lanai.

Danny frowned, and putting the water on the bedside table he looked at his watch. "Well, it's Thursday morning now, and the last time we saw you was Monday afternoon – so long, Steven. Too damn long."

"Uh huh..." Steve replied. Drifting in and out of consciousness kind of messed up your body clock, he could have been gone hours or a week for all he knew. All he did know was that Danny looked like he hadn't slept for days. "You been here all night?"

Danny shrugged and tried unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn. "I was too wired to sleep."

Steve looked down at his bandages and back up to his partner. "Well, I guess I'm not going anywhere for a little while, Danny. Go home, you look like you're about to drop."

Danny opened his mouth to argue, then thought better of it. He hadn't slept properly in days and spending the night curled up on the uncomfortable little chair at Steve's bedside, he _was_ about ready to drop. "Yeah... I'll call Rachel, she can come get me. I'll get Chin or Kono to come sit with you."

"I don't need someone to sit with me, Danno. I'm okay. Got some good drugs here... Feel a little bit like a crack whore..."

Danny yawned again and shook his head. "No, no way. You're not going out of our sight. Not ever. I'm gonna get one of the doctors to sew one of those LoJack transmitter thingies to you. You know how long we were trying to find you, Steven?"

"Since Monday, like you said?"

Danny gave him his most withering look and pulled the phone out of his pocket. "If you ever go off without waiting for me or Chin or Kono ever again, Steven, I'll be the one putting your ass in the hospital. You hear me?"

Steve opened his mouth to argue then thought better of it as vague memories of Danny's terrified face peering down at him in that stinking barn began to form in his aching brain. Danny wasn't just angry with him, he was scared, and that wasn't something he ever wanted his partner to be.

"I - I guess I should have waited..."

"Damn straight you should have waited," Danny replied, dialling his ex-wife's number.

"I'm sorry, Danno."

Danny bit his lip, shook his head and punching Steve gently on the leg, he walked out the room with his phone pressed to his ear.


	5. Chapter 5

_**The last chapter was a bit of a filler, but I hope this one is more to everyone's enjoyment.**_

_**I'm thinking that being tortured would kind of play on your mind, no matter how badass you were...**_

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><p>Danny threw Steve his door keys and the big SEAL fumbled them with his good hand, hissing with pain. "What the hell, Danny?"<p>

"Still think you're okay on your own, huh? Don't need any help?"

"I'm fine!"

Danny scooped the keys off the floor, ignoring Steve's scowl and opened the door. "Yeah, you're so good you can't even open your front door." And he picked up the bags, and walked into the house with Steve following behind like a surly teenager. Dropping his partner's stuff down by the sofa, he went into the kitchen, opening the fridge and checking the cupboards, until Steve came out to the kitchen to see what he was doing.

"Yeah, feel free to rummage round my house, Danny. My diary's upstairs, want me to go get it?"

Danny didn't even miss a beat, he knew Steve was still hurting so he let the sarcasm slide, for now – although he wasn't sure how much longer his temper would hold. As soon as Steve had started to feel better, the arguments had begun. First it had been about how long he had to stay in the hospital, then when he'd moaned at the doctors enough so that they had given in and discharged him, the arguments about how he planned looking after himself had begun. Chin had tried to broker some peace by suggesting that Steve call his sister to come stay with him for a while, but everyone had agreed that Steve needed to relax and rest up, and Mary McGarrett was about as far from relaxing and restful as a person could had called Catherine to let her know what had happened but she was on top secret manoeuvres and there was no way she could get leave for at least a month. The cousins themselves had offered to stay with Steve but logically, Danny was the best choice and they all knew it. It didn't mean that either of them had to be happy about it.

Steve had continued to insist he didn't need a babysitter, that he was fine, even on the ride home from the hospital, and whilst Danny was glad that Steve was on the mend, if he didn't stop bitching, he was going to put a bullet in the big SEAL's head – or his own - he hadn't quite decided.

"You have no food in the house, Steven. What are you intending to eat for lunch? Breakfast cereal with lumpy milk or green bread and cheese sandwiches? You choose and I'll make it for you."

"I can get take-out. My hands are not so busted up that I can't use the phone, Danny."

"What, so you're going to live on Kamekona fried shrimp for the next week?"

" I like shrimp."

"Or you could stop being such an ass and just let me help you out here. I know you're like a one-man-army kind of guy, but even armies need back up once in a while."

Steve grumbled something that Danny couldn't quite make out and leaving his partner to it, he eased himself down into an armchair in the living room. He was too tired to argue, everything still hurt too much and all he knew deep down that he should take a minute to get his breath back, both literally and figuratively, but it wasn't easy.

For the first few days after his rescue he'd been so dosed up on morphine that he could barely remember his own name, let alone what had happened to him, but as his thoughts became more lucid, memories had begun to push their way through his mind's defences. Memories he wasn't sure that he wanted.

He remembered losing control and rolling the car after the tyre had been shot out, then there was a big blank chunk of nothingness, and the next thing he remembered was waking up tied to a chair with Li sitting opposite him, grinning like a shark.

And then the fun had really begun.

He had tried as hard as he could to not think about what had happened in that barn, the things they'd done to him. Okay, so they'd basically tortured him for a couple of days, it wasn't anything that hadn't happened before. He'd been in bad situations in the past, been captured by hostiles, beaten for information. What Li had done was really nothing all that new, nothing he couldn't handle. His shoulder was a mess but it would heal, his wrists would be scarred, but scars faded, bones fixed themselves, fingernails grew back, lost blood got replaced. He'd been trained to deal with situations like that. Hell, his instructors in Annapolis had practically waterboarded his whole class during hell week. You sucked it up, chalked it down to experience, and moved on.

It's what he'd had to do virtually all his adult life so why would this be any different?

"...thing you want me to get?" Danny voice suddenly yelled, snapping Steve out of his thoughts, and he looked up at the blond detective who was peering down at him with an expression that fell somewhere in the middle of concern and extreme annoyance.

"I said I'm going to go to the store to get you some food. Is there anything you want me to get? Powdered egg? Protein shakes? Jerky?... That is all you eat, right?"

Steve gave him his most withering look. "Quick, take me back to the hospital. My sides are splitting."

"Yeah, I know. I'm hilarious and I'm going shopping, for you, so be nice or you really will only get powdered egg and jerky. Now, what would you like?"

Steve sighed. "I don't know, Danny."

"You don't know what food you like?"

Steve shrugged lopsidedly. "Bread?Milk?"

Danny clenched his fist, took a deep breath and forced himself to stay calm. "Yes, Steven. I will get you bread and I will get milk, that goes without saying. What I'm asking is if there's anything besides basic human sustenance that you would like me to buy you? Most people when they are sick, they like certain things that make them feel better – I myself like Chicken Noodle soup when I'm sick."

"But I'm not sick." Steve interrupted.

Danny knuckled the space between his eyebrows. "Okay – one, you are sick. The nice doctor in the hospital told me. And two, if I get hurt I still like the goddamn soup. So just tell me what soup you like so I can go to the store and not hurt you some more. How's that?"

"I like Chicken Noodle too," Steve replied.

Danny threw his hands up in the air. "Great. Chicken Noodle soup all round then. I'll pick up your pain meds too while I'm out."

"I don't need any painkillers, I'm fine."

Danny opened his mouth, then snapped it shut and turned on his heel without saying another word, grabbing his car keys and jacket off the kitchen counter on his way out, leaving Steve wondering if they'd just had an actual real argument.

He wasn't deliberately trying to wind Danny up – not any more than usual anyway, but he wasn't used to having someone around trying to look after him. Apart from the guys in his unit, Steve had pretty much been on his own since he was sixteen years old and having someone actually take interest in his wellbeing was kind of an alien concept. Danny looked genuinely worried every time he jarred his shoulder or knocked his wrists and it was making him feel worse than he did already. He still remembered Danny's terrified face peering down at him in the barn and he didn't ever want to see an expression like that on his friend's face again.

Danny was a good guy, hell, he was the closest thing to family he had apart from Mary, and he just wanted things to get back to normal between them.

He just wanted everything to get back to normal…

"Get a grip, McGarrett!" Steve muttered under his breath and he let himself sink into the chair in the warmth of the afternoon sun that shone in through the big picture window. In the distance he could hear the waves breaking gently against the strip of beach that made up most of his back yard, and he closed his eyes, willing himself to relax. He was home, he was safe and mostly in one piece, and Li was locked away for good this time – everything was going to be fine.

So why couldn't he get rid of the ball of dread that had settled in his stomach?


End file.
